


Sanctuary

by imparfait



Category: South Park
Genre: Alien Abduction, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 12:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3896989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imparfait/pseuds/imparfait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During a routine mission to the surface, Kyle is taken.  Stan gets him back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanctuary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dadvans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dadvans/gifts).



> Written as a gift using the prompt 'aliens got me pregnant'. Features mpreg, like the tag says, so bow out now if that ain't your thing.

It's cold on the surface of Erdorn III, barely warmer inside the dark prison, freezing rain pattering angrily at the roof. The lock to the relay room is easy enough, burnt out with a single tap of a pulse-emitter. For Forturi they have piss-poor security. He struggles with the door, cursing softly under his breath. Humans are weak; he always forgets.

Something's coming down the hall. He hears the quiet hisses, a kind of music, Forturi coming down the pitch-black hallway. His translator fried when his boots hit the ground; too much radio interference on the surface, he can't understand what they're saying and the door, the door is still too heavy to move--

It gives, and Stan ducks inside, flush against the cool metal backside. He holds his breath as he waits for the night watch to pass by. He isn't afraid to die. There are things worse than death. That's why he's here, in the dark on a planet covered in ice, sucking oxygen through a recyc and hoping that he isn't too late. He waits until the slip-slide of their slimy bodies passes by the door, until all he can hear is the freezing methane pelting the roof and the hum of the relay terminal behind him. Kenny gave him the hack. He just hopes he can read the screen without the translator.

It's easy once he has the blueprints. Experimental storage is three lefts and a ramp away. He doesn't want to think about what's going to happen if Kyle isn't there. He just squashes the thought and hurries. Every minute that ticks by is another minute of torture.

The door isn't locked. It's swung wide open, and the light is so, so bright. He expects as much. No one with a shred of sanity left ever tried to break _in_ to experimental storage. Stan tries not to look at the others here, just searches for red hair and pale skin. He wishes he could save them all but he can't. There's only room for two in the pod, and he doesn't have enough oxygen for everyone.

He stops short and stares down through the bars in front of him. It's Kyle, definitely Kyle, and he chokes on a sob while he stares at him in horror. He's unconscious, head lolled to the side, naked and shivering against the bars of his tiny cage. His hair's all matted, dark with grease. He's filthy and bruised and it breaks Stan's heart.

He picks the lock by hand, shorting wires one by one. Blowing it would be faster, but he doesn't want to wake up the whole damn room. He isn't sure how he's going to keep Kyle from shouting when he wakes him up, but he's determined. They're leaving here together. If they can't, Stan has a blaster holstered to his belt. He'd take care of Kyle first. Give him peace. He's earned it, paid in pain and whatever sick shit the Forturi had been doing to him for six months.

The cage door clangs when it opens. Stan flinches, but it's motivation. He's on his knees, shaking Kyle's shoulder before the door even swings fully open.

Kyle chokes on a scream. There's an oh-two tube down his throat; the only thing that stops the sound. His eyes are dull bottle green, empty of anything, even fright. Stan kind of wants to cry but there's no time. He isn't sure if Kyle's even going to be able to walk on his own and they've got to get out now. There's a tiny window before sunrise. He used up his luck with the night guards. They have to be off the surface before the Forturi wake up and realize one of their toys is gone.

***

Kenny's waiting at the dock door up top. Stan barely clears the airlock before the ship jumps to clean space, far enough from the Forturi that he can breathe. Kyle's still in the pod, wheezing and curled up on himself, clutching his stomach. He hasn't spoken yet. Stan kind of wonders if he remembers how. People don't come back from the Forturi. He doesn't know what they do to their prisoners, he's just heard the whispers, the rumors of people dropped off in colonies, broken and mindless, missing limbs, covered in scars.

"You got him?"

Stan nods and sicks up on Kenny's boots. It's almost relieving.

"Oh, God, is he okay?" Kenny peers around the door but Stan shoves him back, away. Kyle wouldn't want anyone to see him like this.

Captaincy is awkward for Stan, always has been, but he's glad for the authority to clear his little skeleton crew off of deck two. He doesn't want prying eyes watching from around corners at Kyle as he hobbles down to their quarters. He moves like he hasn't walked in months, which is probably true. It hurts Stan right down to his bones to see the look of pure agony on his face. He's going to take him down to Medical as soon as he's clean. If Kyle is still in there, somewhere under the pain and the fog, he'd never forgive Stan for letting Wendy poke at him without giving him a bath first.

Kyle's eyes widen when they walk in the door, recognition sparking in the dull green. He moans pathetically, reaches out to the wall, and his knees give out under him. Stan catches him, barely, and they slide down to the floor together.

"C'mon, Kyle," Stan whispers. He's trying to sound soft and safe but the stress of the day is starting to bleed through. Exhaustion is biting at him hard. He hasn't slept more than four hours a night for the last six months. Adrenaline got him through the Forturi colony alive, but it was waning now that Kyle was here, in his arms.

He can't sleep yet. He needs to clean Kyle up, take him to Medical, and then maybe, maybe let himself rest.

Kyle's scrabbles at the wall with his fingers, nails bending back, cracking, breaking. Trying to escape.

"Kyle, Kyle, stop, c'mon," Stan says, desperate, as he pulls Kyle up onto his feet. "Kyle, it's me. You're safe."

Kyle moans again, falls against Stan's chest, and lets himself be led into the washroom.

The bathwater's black in a heartbeat, so Stan empties it and fills it again, shushing Kyle when he startles at the sound of the water draining away, petting his hair when he curls up again, into himself, watching the water cascade down out of the spigot. Stan frets silently, wondering what's the matter. It's been an hour now and he still hasn't spoken, hasn't even tried to.

Wendy will know, he decides as he coaxes Kyle into letting him scrub shampoo into his hair.

***

They have to sedate him when they get to Medical. He starts screaming as soon as he goes through the door, broken and hoarse, throwing himself weakly against Stan, scratching against Stan's uniform, looking for an escape. Wendy gets him with a medipen to the shoulder and he falls against Stan, unconscious again.

He's covered in medipen marks. Stan noticed in the bath, once the grime had been washed away, but he notices again when Wendy strips him down and scans him. It's better that he's asleep, Stan tells himself, because this would probably traumatize him more. Saved from the Forturi, only to be brought home and inspected. Stan wants to kick himself. He should have asked Wendy to come to them, not the other way around.

Wendy says nothing while she works. The stat monitor on the wall beeps in time with Kyle's heartbeat and Stan can hear his own harsh breathing, but the room is silent otherwise. It worries him, why she isn't saying anything at all. When she's done, she covers Kyle up to his shoulders in a blanket--not a medissue, it looks like one of her own, the quilt she bought on Gochen V. She turns to him with a frown set deep on her lips.

"What's wrong with him?" Stan asks.

She lets out a breath and takes the seat next to him. She says nothing.

"He's--" Stan scrubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "He's not talking."

"Trauma," Wendy says. "Disuse. There's nothing wrong with his vocal chords."

"Brain damage?" Stan's voice is wobbly and weak. He's glad they're alone.

She shakes her head. "His brain is fine. I don't know about his mind, Stan. They put him through a lot. Six months is a long time."

"The marks." His voice breaks finally, and so does his resolve. He's been holding back tears since Token came to them with the stolen data cube of Forturi prisoners. Seeing Kyle's face, his life reduced to a single line of hex code, broke Stan in ways he didn't know he could be broken.

"Nutritive supplements. Sedation drugs. Some things the scanner doesn't recognize."

"What did they do to him?"

Wendy gulps air. She looks like she's groping for the right words, probably to try and soothe whatever horrible things Stan's going to feel when she tells him. He prepared himself to find a dead body when he went to the surface. He's ready for anything, even if it hurts.

"He's pregnant," she says.

For a moment, Stan thinks he's going to pass out. He sputters, almost chokes on his own spit, and stares blankly at her. If there's a Forturi worm growing inside of Kyle, he wants it dead, gone, vaporized before it can hurt him more. "They--"

Wendy answers the question he didn't ask aloud: "It's human. Genetic match for Kyle. I think they cloned him."

"Why?" Stan manages to get out.

"Who knows?" She shoots a pitying look at him and starts in on the laundry list of things that happened to Kyle: broken bones, electric shock, starvation. 

He stops listening eventually. He has to shut it off. It's too much. He's too tired.

He falls asleep against the edge of Kyle's bed, Wendy's quilt as a pillow. He wakes up in the morning to fingers in his hair, which makes him startle, because he's been alone for so long now. He looks up and stares at Kyle, who looks terrified, but trusts him enough to touch him.

Kyle's face screws up. He's trying to say something, Stan realizes dully, but nothing comes out. He gives up and looks away, fingers tightening in Stan's hair.

"Do you know who I am?" Stan asks.

Kyle nods and closes his eyes. Stan feels his heart swell up. That's more than he expected.

"Do you know where you are?"

A shake of the head. Stan carefully moves Kyle's hand out of his hair and clutches it between his own. "We're home, okay? We're in Medical. You're safe now," he says, even if it's kind of a lie. Wendy doesn't know how to end a pregnancy that shouldn't exist. She isn't sure she can do it without hurting Kyle more.

Kyle shakes his head again and takes a deep breath. He touches his stomach and Stan realizes with a lurch of his own that Kyle _knows_ precisely what's happened to him.

"We're going to figure _that_ out, okay?"

Kyle pulls away from him suddenly, curls protectively into himself, and gives Stan a long, dull stare. He shakes his head. "No," he croaks.

He sounds awful. Rusty isn't the right word for it, it's worse than that. Stan's never heard anything like it. 

"Kyle, you aren't-- you can't-- your body--" He doesn't want to say what he thinks, that Kyle's body isn't made for this; that Kyle isn't right, he can't make decisions like that when he's terrified of the bathwater.

"No," Kyle repeats in that horrible voice. Selfishly, Stan wishes he stayed quiet. Hearing him like this is breaking Stan's heart.

At least he's alive, Stan thinks.

***

 

Stan can't hide in his quarters day and night with Kyle like he wants, he has a ship to captain. Kenny's doing a good job but the last thing Stan needs is a court martial on top of everything else. There's dignitaries to chaperone, planetary surveys to conduct, and Stan wonders if he can take a sabbatical to get out of it all. He’s got plenty of leave saved up. Months of it. He was saving it for a long-awaited trip to Rhonan, the honeymoon they never got, but that isn’t going to happen now. He can’t imagine Kyle stretched out on a beach, sipping on Truskan Sunrises, reading mystery novels and complaining about the glare on his infopad screen.

That seems like a lifetime ago now, their little dream vacation that never was—never will be. Some nights he tries to picture their life in the future but he can’t. He doesn’t know what it’s going to look like, if Kyle will ever be okay, or what’s going to happen with the thing growing inside of him.

Recovery is agonizingly slow. Kyle's walking better than he was three weeks ago. His breathing is better. His voice is still awful, hoarse and low, but he speaks in short, simple sentences now. He's still having trouble with food. Wendy keeps him dosed with nutritive supplements. He hates the medipen, flinches when she pushes it against his skin, but he takes it without complaint. Most nights he wakes up screaming which means that Stan is somehow getting less sleep than he was before, which shouldn't be possible but happens anyway.

He's in a piss-poor mood all the time, maybe worse than he was when Kyle was missing, snapping at everyone all the time. The new science officer, Harper, just makes him want to hit things; though to be fair, she did before he found Kyle, too. When he got the message from HQ five months ago that a replacement for Kyle was waiting on the station at Droy, he almost put his fist through a wall. He's been taking it out on Harper ever since.

Kenny corners him in ops one morning during duty change, before they're expected on the bridge.

"Stan," he says, which makes Stan stop with his coffee halfway to his mouth because Kenny only calls him that when they're alone. They've known each other since childhood, shared a display unit in school, went off to the officer program at university together.

"What?"

Kenny looks guilty, like he's done something he regrets now. That makes worry shoot cold through Stan's veins. Kenny is reasonably smart, a good officer, but he's the master of his own demise.

"You're relieved," he says. "I cleared it with the Admiral. Take care of Kyle."

He figures Kenny is expecting a fight but Stan just drains his coffee and makes for the lift. He's wanted someone to tell him he isn't needed for weeks now, because he's very much needed one deck down, where Kyle's lying awake, staring down at the little swell in his midsection and crying on and off.

Kyle jumps when Stan slides the door open and slips through. He wipes the tears off his face and offers a wobbly smile that lasts all of three seconds before his face is blank again.

Stan doesn't say anything, just sheds his duty uniform and climbs into bed next to him, not quite touching him. He lets Kyle decide when they touch and it sucks because Kyle doesn't touch him at all, but he feels better knowing that Kyle has that control. His agency's been stripped away, stolen for so long, Stan doesn't want to take any away from him now.

He falls into fitful sleep and wakes up feeling like his head's stuffed with cotton. Kyle hasn't moved but his eyes are closed and his lips are set in a severe frown, one hand clawed around the blanket and the other over his stomach.

"Are you asleep?" Stan asks.

"No," Kyle answers. "I don't want to dream."

***

Stan doesn't know how long his command reprieve will last, but a week passes and he still isn't called to the bridge. It's strange, hearing Kenny's voice over the PA, doing shipwide announcements every morning at seven hundred hours.

He's laying in bed alone in silence after announcements. Kyle's in the washroom. He stays in there for hours sometimes. Stan doesn't know what he does in there, doesn't ask, but when he hears a pitiful cry through the flimsy door separating it from the bedroom, he’s up in a flash. He remembers not to make loud noises, to move slowly when he opens the door. Even if Kyle’s hurt, rushing in will just frighten him. Stan’s determined not to scare him.

He's standing shirtless in front of the mirror, prodding at a yellow bruise on his shoulder. The damage is mostly healed but the worst of it still isn't gone, faded down into off-color marks that mar otherwise pale skin. His left hand is cradled against his stomach, thumb rubbing circles around his navel.

"Are you okay?"

Kyle spins on his heel, throws his arms up across his face. Stan stands stock-still, waiting for Kyle to remember where he is, who he's with, and the choke-hold on his heart loosens when Kyle slowly lowers his arms. 

"I heard you crying,” Stan tells him. 

He nods, lets out a little frustrated growl, and turns back to the mirror. He motions at it, like there's something there he wants Stan to see, so Stan moves behind him slowly and looks.

He looks normal--this new normal, whatever it is. His hair is maybe too long, fluffing up and defying gravity. His skin is paler than it used to be, scattered with freckles and healing bruises. There's the bump there, still small and forming. He can’t see anything wrong. He doesn't know what made Kyle cry out.

Stan wonders what he'll look like distorted out, full of a thing that by all rights shouldn't exist. He hates that the Forturi did this to him, hates that Kyle won't end it. He doesn't understand how Kyle can live with it, another daily reminder of what he was put through.

"It's me," Kyle says.

"I know," Stan answers.

"No." He takes Stan’s hand and gently presses it against the bump. It's the first time they've touched in days. "It's me."

Stan knew this, Wendy told him, but it's still startling to hear Kyle say it out loud. "I know," he repeats.

Kyle nods a little. He's watching their reflection so closely, like it's one of his plant specimens that needs to be examined. "Why are you here?"

"I heard you crying," Stan tells him again. He forgets things sometimes. It's getting better with time but Kyle's mind is still fractured, scattered and shattered by six months of abuse.

Kyle shakes his head slowly, bites down on his bottom lip. He looks away from the mirror. "No," he says quietly. "With me. Here."

It's like he's been dunked in ice water. He feels his blood freezing up in his veins. "Because I love you," he manages to say around the lump in his throat.

Kyle won't meet his eyes again. He skirts around Stan, not touching him--he hardly touches him anymore--and picks up his carefully folded shirt off the counter on his way into the bedroom.

Stan stares in the mirror for a little longer, wishing he could understand what Kyle needs, how to help him.

***

He returns to duty the morning that Kyle walks the length of Medical six times, five weeks after Kenny relieved him. Wendy's pleased with Kyle's progress. Stan's happy he's getting better. The bump is bigger now, pressing against the fabric of his shirts, impossible to hide. Kyle's not ashamed of it, not the way he's ashamed of everything else. He makes Wendy examine him with his clothes on, still flinches when she touches him, but he's quiet and compliant until she tells him that he's fine, healthy, and she'll see him again in three days.

"The baby?" Kyle asks while he struggles with his shoe laces. Stan's itching to jump up from his chair and help him but he doesn't know what to do anymore. He's kind of given up. He's just there out of duty, or habit, or love.

"Is fine," Wendy says. Stan knows she's quietly panicking about what to do fifteen weeks from now, when she has to safely get it out of him. She isn't sure what the Forturi did to grow the womb in him, if she should just remove it after delivery. She's a field medic, not a doctor. Stan wonders if they should go on-world to a proper hospital but that isn't his decision to make.

He thinks about Proteus, taking Kyle home. The colony there has a good hospital. Stan's only been to Kyle's homeworld once but he dimly recalls the giant building, all steel and glass, and the way Kyle boasted about having the best hospital in the quadrant, right there in his hometown. He'll talk to Wendy, he decides, some other time, when they're alone.

They walk back to their quarters in silence. Stan hovers by the door after Kyle passes through.

"I'm going to the bridge," he says.

Kyle looks back at him, watching him carefully. "Okay."

"I'll be back later. Eighteen hundred hours." Stan fidgets awkwardly. Saying goodbye has never felt so strange.

"I'll be here," Kyle tells him. "I'm going to read a little."

"Don't forget to eat." Stan puts his hand on the latch and watches as Kyle crosses the room to the little table by the window. He likes to sit there, sometimes staring out into space, sometimes reading whatever's on his infopad. Stan doesn't ask. Kyle doesn't tell him.

Stan locks the door behind him. 

Stan's always been a fixer. He wanted to do station mechanics at university until Kenny talked him into officer school. He doesn't regret it; he met Kyle on the first day of classes, both of them fresh-faced and eager. Lately he wonders how things would've been different if they never met. Kyle wouldn't have been on Centuron all those months ago, inventorying the native plant life. His comm wouldn't have gone dead in the middle of that thunderstorm. He wouldn't have been taken and tortured.

He can't fix this. He can't turn back the clock and sign up for a different intro class, never meet Kyle, save him that way. He can only sit there and watch while Kyle struggles to fix himself, alone.

The crew is shocked to see him when he steps out of the lift, Kenny especially. Stan supposes he could have taken more time if he wanted to but he can't take it anymore, down there in silence, watching Kyle fight his way back to life. He needs to be away for a while. It's selfish and he hates himself for it, but it's true.

"Is everything okay, Cap?" Kenny asks. He's trying to sound mild but Stan can hear the disquiet lacing through his words.

"Fine," Stan tells him. They share a look. Kenny can read his face better than anyone, so Stan expects it when he sees Kenny's expression transform into worry.

"Alright, our fearless leader's back." He hops out of the command chair and offers it to Stan with a flourish and a bow.

Too much, Stan thinks. Even for Kenny. His crew isn't stupid. They know exactly what's wrong. Things don't stay secret on a starship. 

He takes his seat back and checks the duty log. It still hurts to see _Harper, Tamara_ signed in as science officer but he shakes it off. Kyle isn't well, maybe he never will be again, but he's downstairs in their quarters, staring out at the stars. Six months ago, that was more than Stan ever thought he'd get to say again.

***

Things fall into an uncomfortable pattern. Stan leaves every morning for duty while Kyle is still asleep. He comes home in the evenings to Kyle picking at a tray from mess and reading off his infopad. Sometimes the display panel is on, those shows he always loved about the origin of the species, thousands of years before mankind shot away from planet Earth. For someone who never set foot on Earth, Kyle was obsessed with it. Stan's glad he remembers that, that who Kyle is hasn't changed as much as he feared it might.

They hold conversations know. Kyle's words are still stilted, scattered sometimes. He still jumps when Stan surprises him, but he only wakes up once a night now and he doesn't scream. He whimpers sometimes, nightmares still flitting through his mind, and Stan wishes he could wrap him up in his arms and keep him safe. Kyle doesn't touch him, though, so Stan keeps his hands to himself, makes his peace with the idea that Kyle isn't comfortable with hands on him after months of being tortured.

Maybe they'll never touch again. It's a thought Stan can't stomach.

When Stan comes home to silence and empty quarters one night, panic freezes him in the door. _No_ , he thinks to himself, because Kyle can't be gone again. He can't have gone through all of this only to have him stolen away again.

He comms to Kenny, who's still on the bridge, covering Lassiter's break for dinner. Begs him to check everywhere, make sure Kyle's on this ship somewhere. He's choking on guilt. He should have just stayed relieved until Kyle was better, or at least until he could defend himself. Stan would never forgive himself if Kyle was taken again, snapped up one more time when he thought he was finally safe, when he was healing.

Running an all-decks search takes the computer forty-five seconds. It feels like a lifetime. Stan just stands there in the doorway, staring into their empty quarters. There's no tray from the mess, the display is dark, and he can't see Kyle's infopad anywhere, though he can't see anything through the tears blurring his eyes.

He's terrified, right up until Kenny's voice crackles through the comm, telling him Kyle's signal got picked up in the Science wing, down in lab one. His old lab. His place. Stan isn't so much surprised as he is shocked. Other than trips to Medical or the mess, Kyle doesn't leave their quarters. Before, he was limited by his inability to walk, but now he just doesn't. Or maybe he does, Stan realizes dully as he hurries down the hall to the lift, down two decks to Science. Stan's gone all day, after all. He doesn't know what Kyle does for the ten hours he's on duty.

He peers around the open door to lab one and gapes openly at Kyle, who's standing next to Harper, their heads bent together. Kyle's gesturing down at his infopad, talking in low tones, words stilted but coming together.

"I can't believe I missed that," Harper says. 

Kyle shrugs. "Anybody could," he says. He jumps a little, touches his stomach. Harper's trying not to stare and failing. Stan understands. It's a strange thing to see. "I just read these all day. So I caught it."

"You read my reports all day?" She sounds as surprised as Stan feels. He didn't know what Kyle got up to all day but he never imagined he was reading Harper's specimen analyses. All this time, he's been up to something entirely normal. Stan wishes he knew before. It gives him hope that things will be normal again.

Kyle nods. "This was my job," he says.

"I know," Harper tells him. "The Captain makes that really clear."

Stan has the decency to blush. Kyle colors, too. His eyebrows knit together but there's a tiny smile on his lips. "I'm sorry. He..."

She shakes her head. "I get it. I spent a week wondering why he hated me. Then Commander McCormick told me about you." She taps at her display. "I'll redo the test."

Kyle nods and straightens. "I should get supper," he says. "Will you...?"

"I'll file a report when I'm done," she promises.

Stan makes a break for the lift before Kyle can turn around and see him hovering in the doorway. He feels a little relief, somewhere down inside him. 

***

Another month goes by before Stan broaches the subject of going to Proteus. He can't imagine Kyle getting any bigger than he is now, but he knows that he will. He moves awkwardly, getting in his own way all the time which would be bad enough if he were completely well but he isn't. He startles every time the thing moves inside him. His body looks strange, his balance is off, and Stan worries that he's going to fall and hurt himself all the time.

"Can we talk?" Stan asks one evening when he returns from duty. He stopped to pick up tea for Kyle on the way up and he sets it down with a thunk next to Kyle's elbow.

Kyle looks up from his infopad and nods. Stan motions to the tea, waits for Kyle to pick it up and sip it carefully before he starts to speak.

"I've been thinking about--that." He motions to Kyle's stomach. "And what we're going to do when you need to have it. Taken out."

Kyle sips his tea again. "Wendy can do it," he says.

"I don't think so. She's worried about it." Stan's worried about it. He's worried about what the hell they're going to do with it once it's out, too. Kyle isn't in any condition to take care of it.

Kyle sets the tea down next to his infopad. "Okay," he says. "I can't do it myself. I don't have the parts." He cheeks go ruddy. "I don't know what you want me to do."

"I think you should go to a hospital. The one on Proteus." Stan's proud of his little plan. Kyle can be home, somewhere comfortable, in good care. He'll feel safe on Proteus. Stan won't worry so much. Or he will, but less about the logistics of it. 

"Ah." Kyle pushes the tea away from him. "I've been waiting for this."

"For what?"

"To get sent away." He pushes himself up out of the chair and picks up his infopad. "I'm sorry," he says as he pads across the room, towards the bed. He stops in front of their little cabinet of clothes and pulls his go bag out of one of the drawers. "I'll pack, call my mother, maybe, before I just. Show up on her doorstep."

Stan's head is foggy, confusion lacing into every thought. He didn't mean for Kyle to take it that way, doesn't understand where he got that from at all. "Wait, what? Sent away?" He hops out of his chair and hurries across the room, just barely manages to stop himself short of grabbing Kyle's shoulders. "I'm not sending you anywhere."

Kyle shakes his head, but he drops the bag on the ground. Stan counts it as a victory. "You don't want this," Kyle says. "None of it."

"I love you," Stan counters.

"You love Kyle. That Kyle, Before-Kyle." Kyle squeezes his eyes closed and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. "You don't even touch _me_."

Stan drops his hands to Kyle's shoulders as gently as he can. It's the first time they've touched in weeks. Kyle's warm underneath his palms, healthier than the last time Stan had his hands on him. "I don't want to hurt you more."

"You think you can hurt me?" Kyle looked down at the floor between them. "I was already in Hell." He rests one hand on his stomach. "He's not going to know what it feels like."

"What?"

"He's me," Kyle says. "Another me. Without all..." He taps his temple with his free hand. "He won't be broken."

Stan loses it then, pulls Kyle against him, squeezes him tight and cries into his shoulder. Kyle isn't broken, just unwell. He's getting better every day. These things take time. He's already gotten so much better. Stan knows, he _knows_ that Kyle will recover. One day he'll be back to puttering around in his little lab, humming along to piano sonatas while he double- and triple-checks his test results.

"I love you," Kyle says quietly, into Stan's ear. "I miss you all the time. I never thought I'd see you again, but you saved me." He coughs a little, clears his throat. "But you don't touch me, not even at night, when you're asleep. I just make you cry."

Stan shakes his head and says nothing, instead he reaches one hand up, tilts Kyle's chin with a knuckle, and presses a kiss to his lips. It feels like coming home, finally, after all these months. He doesn't know what they're going to do. He doesn't know how long it's going to take Kyle to get back to his old self, if he ever will at all, or how they're going to manage a child in ten weeks.

He knows he loves this man no matter what and if either of them go anywhere, they go together.

***

It's eighteen months from the day that Kyle disappeared when he returns to duty. It's silly, the whole thing, because they left their room together that morning, brought Ryan to childcare together, but he still makes Kyle wait in ops until he's briefed and dismisses Harper for assignment on the Piccoli.

He hopes she didn't take her reassignment too hard.

Kyle rolls his eyes when he steps out onto the bridge. "Reporting for duty, Captain," he says, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. 

Stan knows he doesn't like that everyone's staring openly at him, but Stan likes that he's there, holding out his assignment, waiting for Stan to take it and sign it. He supposes he could've signed him back in first thing in the morning, in their quarters while Kyle struggled to get Ryan into his little onesie, but Stan wanted this: Kyle on his bridge, proving to everyone that he was back, he did the impossible, he went through Hell and came out whole on the other side.

Stan takes the hand-held from him and signs it with a little flourish. “Welcome back, Commander,” he says.


End file.
